I think in the recent MU chart ivysaur and charizard are being underestimated.
Ivysaur is the only pokemon that has any real zoning abilities and thanks to DKs huge frame it's very easy to get hit by razor leaf and get nailed by an uair or worse one of ivysaurs smash attacks.
DK does have startup super armor on Kong Punch, Spinning Kong, and Headbutt but those are easily outprioritized by grabs. And here's where things get interesting versus charizard. Charizard has DK beat on the ground, with better ground movement speed, nearly identical frame data on tilts and an actual projectile in flamethrower. He also can use flare blitz to get early stocks.
Squirtle is actually the only one who has issues with DK. Due to DKs long limbs squirtle has a super hard time getting in and his surprisingly quick frame data not to mention wide hitbox spread means it's easy for DK to simply swat squirtle away whenever he has to. Squirtle despises characters with long range with good frame data because it means they're hitting squirtle before squirtle is in range to hit them making fighting them a royal pain.
This brings up a pretty conflicting viewpoint in terms of the DK - PT matchup.
A commonly viewed side in terms of what most Pokemon Trainer mains say is pretty similar to the post says.
Although Squirtle gets a lot of damage when getting in DK greatly outpaces Squirtle's sluggish ground movement and has greater hitboxes in the air compared to Squirtle, and his confirms and combos as a light water turtle can certainly make things difficult at times.
Ivysaur on the other hand has great zoning tools to effectively play lame and make DK really struggle, while not having to commit to anything. Ivy abuses DK's poor landing game heavily with that Up Air making him take great damage and combined with Down Air, Tether cancels, Razor leaf and Nair, DK has an extremely tough time recovering against an Ivysaur who knows the matchup and what options and mixups they have to cover.
Charizard has some incredible ground options with his amazing framedata with Inital Dash and Runspeed allowing for a good bait and punish game and his disjointed poking tools like Ftilt, DTilt, and Flamethrower, and while Dk has the better airgame with better air speed and faster attacks you can never ignore the sheer power and range Charizard possess with his full of cheese Back Air, his anti-airing and safe Nair, his combo and confirm heavy Up Air which can combo into every aerial and his good Forward Air which gives a good powerful burst option often used offstage. His Down Air is also quite strong and can be used after conditioning DK to recover low with Flamethrower and 2 framing with Ftilt.
So in conclusion, a match up that heavily favors using Ivysaur to lame out DK and using the other Pokemon flexibly when you need to in order to not be too linear.
I can however see where HIKARU is coming from, it is important to note that he has played and gotten serious competitive results with Pokemon Trainer, and knows the character very well, probably better than me anyways, and while I can't see his reasoning, I can guess as to why he might think that.
Ivysaur despite what I have previously stated, has a very tough time landing, and DK is very good at juggling with his frametrapping invincible Up Air, not even Switch can help most of the time as you'll be frametrapped and will be forced to eat a bunch of damage, and DK is pretty good at getting you into that spot. A misspaced Razor Leaf could find yourself on the wrong end of a Grounded Spinning Kong, putting you in a not ideal spot and giving DK lots of stage control to roam around in and abuse Ivysaur's poor disadvantage.
Charizard while having better grounded options, is throughly beat in the air and will eat a lot of damage from a bad interaction, both having the tools to make each other explode offstage, in a juggle spot, in neutral, a pretty standard heavy vs heavy fight, where one interaction will decide the stock from these heavy-hitting large giants.
Squirtle, contrasting to what I previously have said, has the tools to effectively weave around DK's hitboxes and absolutely puliverize DK with a single grab. DK is taking at worst, 50%, and it's likely to be closer to the 70%-80%, not even mentioning how difficult it can be to hit Squirtle not letting DK get anything started, his good edgeguarding tools with Nair, Waterfall, Down Tilt, Water Gun to force DK to Up-B, (Fun Fact:DK's Up B is immune to windboxes, at least he gets something.) and how easily it can be to get something started with as little as one hit opening a gateway of pain and helpless SDI.
In conclusion, a matchup that heavily favors using Squirtle to weave around and punish DK heavily and using the other Pokemon flexibly when you need to in order not to be too linear.
So which one is right?
That's really up to you as the player to decide, how you use your Pokemon, your preferences, playstyle, and ablility to deal with DK as all 3 starters can cause different viewpoints as to how the tiny details of this MU really are. It's considered +1 or higher for PT regardless of viewpoint, but that doesn't always mean everything, we did see HIKARU win a Japanese offline invitational, even beating Raito, in a matchup that is generally considered -2 for DK at absolute best.
Now as to why Mario is in +1 is a completely mystery to me, I'll have to get back to you on that one.
to be worse than
